Hot-weather electricity blackouts that crippled much of suburban Salt Lake City earlier this month nearly emptied the state's biggest aqueduct and jeopardized fire protection in a half-dozen cities.
"This really scared us," said David G. Ovard, manager of the Salt Lake Water Conservancy District, the largest water wholesaler along the urban Wasatch Front.Though it was not publicized at the time, Ovard said depletion of the Jordan Aqueduct created a shortage that would have made fire control difficult.
"Particularly, West Jordan was on the brink of disaster," said Ovard. "(But) all those cities are at risk if you can't get water out of the pipeline."
The Jordan Aqueduct supplies Bluffdale, Riverton, South Jordan, West Jordan, Taylorsville and the unincorporated neighborhoods of Kearns and Granger.
During a series of peak-demand power outages that occurred in the south part of the Salt Lake Valley beginning two weeks ago, water pres-sure in the aqueduct dropped to zero, and managers along its route were forced to rely on emergency booster pumps in their struggle to keep pace with demand.
The 70-inch pipeline taps Deer Creek Reservoir in Wasatch County and runs from just above Bridal Veil Falls in Provo Canyon to about 3600 West in the Salt Lake Valley.
Ovard said the pipeline's depletion came as a complete surprise and occurred three or four years before the district's engineers predicted it might happen. The district is one of several in urban Utah feeling the crunch of an ongoing population boom that places increasing demands on a limited resource.
"This is going to force us to reprioritize our capital-improvement budget," said Ovard.
Because of this month's crisis, the district is likely to expedite plans for building a companion pipe-line to shadow the Jordan Aqueduct across the valley and will probably invest in additional booster pumps.
"We're going to try to improve things for next year," said Ovard, "but if we get another real hot cycle . . . "
Like all water companies, the Salt Lake Water Conservancy District operates on two supply components - volume and capacity.
Volume in northern Utah is plentiful because Deer Creek Reservoir and any number of other water-storage lakes above the Wasatch Front remain flush with springtime water.
But capacity bottomed out during the power outages as a number of small, urban reservoirs used to feed peak demand in the evening and early morning could not be filled because electric well pumps that normally supply them couldn't be used.
The glitch shifted demand to the aqueduct, which was all but drained in a few hours. Pressure dropped to zero as numerous booster pumps sapped the pipeline.
Ovard said the 69-inch Salt Lake Aqueduct, which funnels Deer Creek Reservoir water via the foothills above Alpine in Utah County to the state's two biggest cities - Salt Lake City and Sandy - felt a similar but less-dramatic strain.
"The two major aqueducts into the valley were really at the edge," he said, predicting that such crises will likely happen again. "It's going to be an annual thing now, chasing the weak spots in the system."